Random musings of one Columbian, a place to connect and to learn more about issues and events in Howard County. If you would like to have me blog on an issue, organization or an upcoming community service event email me at duanestclair@gmail.com
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Tuesday, May 28, 2019

Alabama and Kansas shows where conservatism leads

Alabama has been in the news lately with its Republican-controlled radical pro-life agenda in restricting access to abortions. This former Confederate state has a long history of showing the impact of resisting progress and change. Here is where the state ranks on quality of life issues.

"In 2012 and 2013, at the urging of Governor Sam Brownback, lawmakers cut the top rate of the state’s income tax by almost 30 percent and the tax rate on certain business profits to zero. Under “supply-side” economic theory, these deep tax cuts should have acted — as Brownback then predicted — like “a shot of adrenaline into the heart of the Kansas economy,” stimulating strong growth in economic output, job creation, and new business formation. But in reality, Kansas underperformed most neighboring states and the nation on all of those measures after the tax cuts. For example:

Kansas’ 4.2 percent private-sector job growth from December 2012 (the month before the tax cuts took effect) to May 2017 (the month before they were repealed) was lower than all of its neighbors except Oklahoma and less than half of the 9.4 percent job growth in the United States.

Likewise, the number of Kansas residents reporting income on their federal tax returns from a partnership or “S corporation” (two of the main types of businesses that the tax cuts exempted from income tax) grew by 4.1 percent between 2012 and 2015, well below the 5.4 percent growth for the United States and below all of Kansas’ neighbors except Missouri.

Moreover, Kansas revenues plunged, leading to cuts to education and other vital services and downgrades in the state’s bond rating. On June 6, 2017, the legislature terminated what Brownback had termed a “real live experiment” in supply-side tax policy, repealing the business profits exemption and moving income tax rates back toward where they had started."